Misread art semiotics confirmed believers’ demonic conspiracy regardless of rebuttals

Evidence

In the case of Pizzagate, the demonic aspect of the plot was enhanced by an additional thread discovered in John Podesta’s hacked emails: “spirit cooking.” Podesta and his brother, Tony, were purportedly attending Satanic rituals conducted by the artist Marina Abramović where guests dined on semen and blood consumed on “earthquake nights.” “WIKI WICCAN: PODESTA PRACTICES OCCULT MAGIC,” yelled the far-right aggregation site Drudge Report when the telling emails came to light. Alex Jones dubbed spirit cooking “black magic,” and Mike Cernovich weighed in with “sick stuff” and “sex cult.” Abramović’s repeated rebuttals that “Spirit Cooking”—the title of an art installation—was just that, art, and that nobody ate semen, blood, or anything else unsavory, had no impact. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Refutation-immune belief formation matches vault claims about epistemic style shared by conspiracy and Christian-nationalist circles. — connects to: Conspiracy believers abandon specific claims while retaining a core that something must be wrong — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 214; Conspiracy belief compounds and tolerates flagrant logical contradictions — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 94

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy believers abandon specific claims while retaining a core that something must be wrong #expands (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 214
• Conspiracy belief compounds and tolerates flagrant logical contradictions #corroborates (0.80) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 94